The NAACP again plans to ask that the U.S. Department of Justice review the case of Harold Wright Jr. to determine whether his civil rights are being violated.

The organization is holding a news conference at the Altheimer Memorial Church of God in Christ in Tacoma this Wednesday.

The NAACP formally asked the federal government in July 2008 to determine whether there was racial bias in the prosecution of the former Tacoma middle school principal.

In July 2007, a jury convicted Wright and his co-defendant, Richy Carter, both of whom are black, of third-degree rape involving a young white woman.

Prosecutors alleged the two sexually assaulted the woman at the Pierce County town house of a friend after meeting her and two other friends in a Puyallup bar in 2004. The woman, then 19, knew Wright from Spanaway Lake High School, where he was an assistant principal when she was a student.

A state appeals court in Tacoma has overturned the conviction.

In a 2-1 decision released Sept. 1, the Court of Appeals Division II found Pierce County Judge Lisa Worswick erred in allowing jurors to consider convicting Wright and a co-defendant of the lesser charge of third-degree rape during their trial in 2007.

Deputy prosecutor Kit Proctor said her office will appeal the decision to the Washington State Supreme Court.

The justices sent the case back to Pierce County Superior Court for retrial on the second-degree rape charges.

Wright, now 38, was the principal of Baker Middle School when second-degree rape charges were filed against him and Carter in February 2007. He was placed on administrative leave and resigned after his conviction.

WHAT: NAACP state-area conference
WHEN: 9:30 a.m., September 9, 2009
WHERE: Altheimer Memorial Church of God in Christ, 1121 S. Altheimer, St., Tacoma